Category: Anger

Since Thursday I have been in a downward emotional spiral. I am holding on. Here is why.

Hi everyone.  Maybe people are getting tired of hearing my daily struggles that break through my normal defenses sometimes and bring me to not a cliff, but a steep hill almost impossible to not fall down, with things to hit and bounce off of hurting more but very few things to grab on to that I can use to stop the falling.  Two of those things together stopped my fall Friday night, hopefully giving me something I can hold on to that will stop the falling long enough to get off the mountain slope.  I reached close enough to the bottom once in 2014.  I don’t want to fall that far again nor see what is below that at the very bottom of that long fall.  

I also need to explain that for a week I was running on 4 hours sleep and last night I only got 2 hours and 23 minutes (Friday night Saturday morning).  This morning (Saturday) on our walk Ron who also struggled to sleep noticed I was sluggish, slow for me, not talking much.  When we got back home my body couldn’t do more.  Barely able to take off my jacket and getting Ron’s help taking off a heavy long sleeved sweatshirt that was too small for me, after I put on a tee shirt I fell into bed.  I slept all day.  Ron also had not slept so came to bed for 3 or so hours.  During that time I had a nightmare of my childhood abuse and woke him by crying out for my abuser to please stop, to not hurt me more.  Ron woke me as gently as he could.  I again felt shame and sorrow over waking him from his slumber over my own trauma.   It had slowed down greatly but this last week the nightmares and crying outburst while sleeping, and while awake in my Pink Place, which Ron has tried hard to make a safe space for me.   I go through a lot of facial tissues in here.  

On Thursday after not sleeping well and having other issues I watched two videos which later was followed by a third A few days later while still trying to recover.  I just realized over half of my current tabs open on YouTube are of PSAs on child abuse or testimonies of victims trying to find resolution.   I get them in my feed because when I am in a triggered emotional set back I tend to watch these and of course Google / YouTube fills my recommendations with a constant feed of more of them.  And I fall down that mountain slope reaching out and read more and more and more of others abuse making the slope steeper with the things to hit that hurt harder, bigger, and the helpful handholds so less.   The very same reason I had to stop participating on the Male Survivor site.  Once I fall down that mountain slope the more I read / hear of others abuse so much of what happened to me the faster I fall with few things to grab on to that will slow my falling, which seems to get faster the longer I fall.  

The first video was the one that set it off.  I cut it off after the movie went to “Jesus saved my life from my abusive father who was killing me part” when I watched it.  If that saved him I am glad, but Jesus nor religion never stopped my abuse nor were any of my abuser anymore into religion than for a brief period when they got a lot of attention from being involved in the Sunday School teachings they so loved the attention as new members and maybe thought that would wash away all their sins.   They soon got disinterested and left, and I was still being abused.  Abused before it, during it, and after it.  Sometimes I would be abused before we got ready for church and if not before then I knew I would be when we got back home.  In my case the power of the lord had no help for me.  

So the first video was the worst.  It talked about how the father hated the kid because he was another man’s son.  In the video the wife had an affair and that left the husband forever taking his violence on the kid.  In my case I never thought my adoptive mother was my mother, and from the few records I could find after her death it seems my mother’s father paid for me to be adopted and paid the biological father a large sum of money.  But sadly my birth certificate list both of them as my parents.  But that was the feeling of my adoptive father, he was not raising another man’s kid.  He took that anger out on me and made clear his own kids could also to retain his favor.  In the video the other kids snuck him food and comforted him, not mine.  Mine denied the food unless I either humiliated myself or sexual pleased them.  For a few years the daily abuse was less when the adopting mother was around, which was rare, because I was still her adorable little toddler toy to parade around, yet she explained the bruising and lack of normal interaction I had as I was shy and clumsy falling often into things.  The dead eyes and lack of interest in things she explained as being tired because I fought to not go to bed.  As I have said before by the time I was 6 years old in first grade she had stopped protecting me and slowly became a participant in my abuse as I aged rather than just turning away ignoring it.  It took my school getting involved to change a lot in my life.   

But as in the short video, shorter if you don’t watch the Jesus intervention part at the last third, I became aware of the sound of every abuser.    Their footsteps with shoes or bare feet, their breathing when hurting me or using me sexually, both oral and anal, and feared being around them or the sound of them getting closer.  I also wondered if this was the time they did not stop.  I am not sure if I understood if they did not it would be death, I just feared this time they wouldn’t stop and it would keep going on forever.  As a child we had no religious beliefs so I had no idea that the abuse might stop in heaven or continue in hell, I knew nothing of death.  I just knew I wanted them not to hurt me, I wanted to have food and eat like they did, I wanted someone to hold me and tell me I did a good thing like they got.  I wanted affection.  I wanted to be able to go to the bathroom without conditions or being told to pee in a glass that as it filled I would have to drink all of it before being able to continue peeing in the glass until finishing, humiliated, crying, sad, hurt, while the hell spawn and their friends gloated over being able to make me do it.  The friends may not have understood the punishments if I peed my clothing or on the floor being reported to my adopting parents by the hell spawn, as my view wouldn’t be heard.   If they said I just peed myself rather than tell them I needed to go or they made me pee on the floor and said I did it before they could stop me … they would be believed and nothing I said would be heard.  Many times I remember them holding me forcing me to pee on something knowing I would take a nude beating with them looking on gloating.  It was a way to make me willing to accept what they demanded and willingly give them what they wanted from me.  

Sadly the only kind affection I got between late 3 to nearly 7 years old was from a little boy lover pedophile across the street.   His abuse I have never seen as traumatic.  Yes he used my body for his own needs, but he was kind, gentle, his touch and hugs were warm with good feelings.  Even when inside me he was kind, gentle, and constantly praising me as a wonderful boy.  It made me want even more to try to make him happy.   He told me over and over what a good boy I was, he really seemed to care for me which I never saw from the young hell spawn who hurt me for their enjoyment, nor from either adoptive parents. 

One punishment the hell spawn would do when they were home with no adult was to tie a wide belt or rope around my neck and then attach it to the stair banister in a way that my head was jerked into looking up at a painful angle, my hands would be tied to or through the stair rails so I couldn’t use them to defend myself.  I would always be nude.  I would sometimes be blindfolded, that was when I knew that more than them hitting me, hurting me, other kids would also be there to hurt and rape me.  I couldn’t tell where the blows might be coming from, who was grasping me grabbing my hips, who was …, everyone must get the idea.  So yes I learned to hear them, to fear them, and the child diddler across the street never seem bad or a threat to me.  He was the only bright kind light in my life.  Then he killed himself and that kindness when away forever.   But it did set me up for looking for kind abusers in my life.  Such as the principle at my 1st to 6th grade school.  He quickly realized the kid I was and made a friendship with my adoptive mother.  Even as he was facilitated a place and way for me to leave class to laydown behind the library shelves along with letting me go with a police officer questions deflected, he was also using me sexually.   Only once he was he hurtful, that was when I insulted a female teacher so before he raped me he made me with a bare bottom bend over his knees and spanked me hard as a lesson.   Then when I stood up, kissed me, hugged me, told me sternly to always obey my teachers.  And then turned me around, lubing my butt hole, and inserted himself inside me to finish …  planting his seed there.  I was then given an abnormal instruction to pull my pants up, go back to my classroom.  That time I was not offered the option to go laydown, nor go to the bathroom to expel his cum.  I understood I was being punished. I worried about it leaking and the pain of sitting.  Thankfully my teacher never called me out for fidgeting and constant movements in my hard no cushion chair, maybe knowing what was going on with me at home and in school.  

Now it is Sunday morning.  I couldn’t finish this post last night.  I was getting too upset and was too tired.   I got another 3 and half hours of sleep before I got up again.  So here is the rest of the story hopefully with less emotional upset from me.

  Wow just rereading correcting my errors now has me worn out emotionally already.  I can not imagine how it must be for everyone reading who don’t know what the life I lived is like.  It must be stories from a strange foreign world or harmful different government on earth somewhere far away.   Sorry it happened to me here, in New England.  But let me continue to get this out before it consumes me again.  I have so much unresolved pain from the past.  Some want me to ignore it, some want to reveled in it seeing my survival as overcoming it but they lose the point, it still haunts / hurts me.  Left undealt with I will be the one left falling down that steep mountain slope with no way of stopping hitting the bottom … which might be death.  

So you have read all of the above, no reason not to provide you with the videos.  The first was the beatings of a defenseless child, making him the other in the family simply because he was the product of another man’s seed he resented having responsibility to feed or care for.  You have read all of the above so here is the video, and again I ask you to make sure you are in a good place to understand that was my daily life so do not take that pain on yourself because I have already done that for all of us.  Here it is.

The second video that continued my downward spiral and the steeping of the mountain slope I was trying to find footing and keep from falling further down that slope to the hell I knew to be at the end.     This is the one being raped at school.  I was by adults but not students, but the older boys were sexually aware enough to act out on me.  Not physically hurtful but emotionally building that idea that was my place in life, to serve the more aggressive, more developed male.  Lucky for me what they wanted was so silly and quick it meant nothing.  And the teachers caught on quicly that if I asked to use the bathroom and other male kids asked right after … they were told to wait until I was back.  Which was very frustrating to them and made several to try to be my out of school friend.  One night If I could plead for it using my body as currency they never wanted to come back again.  No one came to our home and I was not allowed to go to theirs.  I have no idea what scared the older kids in grade school from wanting wanting to stay over night again.  I was willing to please, but the adopting parents were not willing for me to develop friendships.  One of the prices of the “school friend” leaving the next day was instant abuse to make me avoid asking anyone else to stay over again.   

The last video that I watched a day or two after trying to absorb / deal with the abuse was again one that religious overtones.  But even with that the ending was so shocking / revealing I want to include it.   See if I had understood any religion, if I have thought that there was a way to stop the abuse … I would do what so many other kids did.  I would have taken my life.   That is why this post is so hard to make.  It shows how stupid I was at that age, it shows how clueless I was.  If I thought there was a way to move beyond my life at that stage I would have gladly let them go all the way and kill me.   Sorry for all this.  This has been a many day post as I struggled to first write it, reread it and edit it again, then fall some more down the mountain slope to briefly grab something to try to write again.   Side note.  On the other computer I have 10 videos cued up ready to play about child abuse.  Some are PSAs and some are personal survival videos from abuse victims.  Mostly male but a few female.  YouTuber dumps them into my feed and I open them / watch them or save them … all now send me to the mountain making the slope steeper.  There was a time when the slope was not so steep and much easier to walk away from.  The force drawing me to the bottom so small.  Yet now it is returning to like 2014 and I am no longer having the flat stable land before the slope that I lived on so long.  Now I am right at the edge of that slope and far too often I am struggling as I fall down it unable to resist the pull with few handholds and the hurtful things getting ever more  / harder as I fall.   

This is what I have been fighting for months, I forget how long.  I am dealing with my own needing to leave the Male Survivor site, Kamk’s abuse and his now being in the hospital afraid and triggered.  I struggle to balance his needs that right now are far more immediate than mine.  He feels he is looking at death or worse, life with no way to ever be who he was or wants to be.  I want so badly to reach out and hug him, to hold him, to help him … but I again am that child who was forced to ask to be allowed to drink a 14 year old boys urine so I wouldn’t be beaten in the morning. Here is the last video I watched.  I wont be sharing the others in my cue … maybe just as links but no commentary, but maybe I will grant myself mercy and not include them at all.  I am going to post this and go get a shower I have put off for three days.  Much love and warm comforting hugs for those that want them but also simple heartfelt thanks to those that follow and don’t want that physical touch.  Trust me I understand how disrupting and jarring unwanted touch can be.  I love you even if you don’t want hugs.   Here is the last video which was while Rand and Ron were with me providing the handles to grab on to and the way to make the mountain slope less steep.  Hugs / best wishes.  

We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/12/trump-racist-rhetoric-immigrants-00183537

A POLITICO analysis of more than 20 of his rallies and campaign events shows Trump has demonized minority groups in all of them.

 
 
 
 
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By Myah Ward

Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants.

Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”

He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.

 
 

In his lengthy speech Friday, Trump delivered a broadside against the thousands of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora. And he declared that he would use the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a president to authorize rounding up or removing people who are from enemy countries in times of war, to pursue migrant gangs and criminal networks.

“Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” he said.

His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.

“He’s been taking Americans and his followers on a journey since really 2015 conditioning them … step by step instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who writes about authoritarianism and fascism and has been outspoken about the dangers of a second Trump administration.

 

“So immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking their jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets or eat us,” she continued. “That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”

The Trump campaign said while the “media obsesses over rhetoric,” the former president is responding to voters’ concerns.

“The American people care about results that impact their lives. President Trump will take action to deport Kamala’s illegal immigrants and secure the border on day one. That’s what Americans want to hear,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to POLITICO.

Trump has long deployed racist attacks for political gain, including spreading conspiracy theories about whether former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was born in the United States. And when he launched his first campaign in 2015, Trump said Mexico was “not sending its best,” calling immigrants from the country “rapists” who are bringing in crime and drugs. He also promised that day to build a “great big wall.”

But times have changed, and so has he.

The country has moved to the right on immigration — including the Democratic Party and Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. Trump repeatedly bashed Harris as “dumb,” questioned her racial identity and has called her a “DEI” candidate — perpetuating the idea that women and people of color can only be in positions of power because of quotas and preferential treatment.

Harris has touted her record prosecuting transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers and has promised strict enforcement at the Southern border — an effort to appease Americans’ concern about illegal migration. The vice president has vowed to go even further than the Biden administration’s crackdown on asylum.

 

As the political conversation around immigration has shifted, Trump has not only intensified his rhetoric, but his policy plans.

He has increasingly targeted specific communities, including Springfield, Ohio, Charleroi, Pennsylvania and Aurora, arguing that immigrants are destroying American towns and cities across the country and using those examples to call for large-scale federal response. Trump has spent the last month on the trail elevating the claims about those communities — even as local officials have been denying these allegations and asking the Republican nominee to stand down.

Trump on Friday used false stories about gang takeovers in Aurora as he announced he would remove migrants connected to gangs under an “Operation Aurora” based on presidential wartime powers under the Alien Enemies Act. (While police in Aurora have encountered some gang activity tied to a Venezuelan group, there has been no gang takeover in Colorado.)

“Efforts to blame outsiders, a politically voiceless group, which Trump is an expert at doing, has led to atrocities in the United States — everything from Japanese internment to Operation Wetback,” said Ediberto Román, a Florida International University law professor who studies xenophobia and immigration.

Vivid imagery, such as telling crowds of rally attendees that migrants will “cut your throat,” are now a staple of Trump’s speeches. He cites cases of U.S. women and girls allegedly murdered by immigrants in the country illegally, even as studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.

But Trump says they are — because they are inherently worse people. He’s told nearly all-white crowds in the past that they have “good genes,” even before his explicit suggestion this week that non-white immigrants are genetically inferior — when he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that migrants have “bad genes.”

“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, the author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” and a vocal critic of Trump’s rhetoric. “Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”

 
 
 
 
 
 

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Even more violence and asshole stuff from the right.

Trump Calls For “Really Violent Day” By Police [VIDEO]

 Trump has a long history of endorsing police violence, having said that police reaction to the racial unrest in response to the murder of George Floyd in 2020 “was a beautiful thing to watch.”

Axios: Trump Preparing “Catalog” Of Cheating Claims

The former president, who risks jail time and more criminal trials if he loses, has expanded his range of baseless attacks on U.S. voting procedures in recent weeks and months. Trump falsely claimed Monday that Democrats are exploiting an overseas ballot program for expats and military members in order to circumvent “any citizenship check or verification of identity.”

Trump: I Fired Workers Rather Than Paying Overtime

Look at the projection in the next story.  Look the only end might be the clawing back some of the taxes owned to the public treasury from the wealthy people who constantly want more and more public funds only for themselves.  The only loss will be a white majority nation, and Elon Musk is a full out South African racist bigot.  Full out racist bigot.  He is not worried about voting, he is a white man.  He is worried brown / black people will get to vote.   He and tRump talk bad about Haitians and immigrants while hiring them on the cheap.   Hugs.  Scottie

Musk: If Trump Loses, “This Will Be The Last Election”
Trump Repeats Claim Harris Is “Mentally Impaired”

David Pakman recently released a video of Donald Trump’s greatest cognitive hits and when seen in total is something to behold:

Paxton Sues City Of Austin Over Abortion Travel Fund

These maga gang thugs think they can get away with anything and that they don’t have to obey any laws or rules.   Hate rules their lives.  It may have been this guy who said he wrote the bill because he couldn’t stand that kids were coming out at school and being accepted by other students instead of targeted for abuse.  He wants LGBTQ+ kids to be scared to be themselves and to stay in the closet hiding from them straight cis bullies.   Hugs.  Scottie

Florida “Don’t Say Gay” Sponsor Held In Contempt For Flipping Off State Judge During Election Lawsuit Hearing

Fine was in court due to a lawsuit involving a Brevard County election official. As I’ve said here before, he is probably the most obnoxious of all Florida lawmakers, which is really saying something.

He last appeared here when DeSantis vetoed funding for a “woke zoo” because it wouldn’t host a fundraiser for Fine.

Fine also appeared on JMG in May 2022 when he tweeted what many interpreted as a threat to assassinate President Biden. That tweet remains online.

Before that, Fine appeared on JMG when he called for felony charges after Florida Democrats staged a sit-in over the racist US House map submitted by DeSantis. 

And before that, he appeared here when he threatened to defund a Florida Special Olympics event and called a local school board member a “whore” because she’d been invited its fundraiser gala and he was not.

Fine was a sponsor of the bill that stripped Disney’s self-governing status. His family owns annual passes to the “woke” theme park giant.

In 2022, he arranged for a Florida town to honor a war criminal who was convicted of executing four Iraqi prisoners. In April 2023 he declared, “Damn right, we ought to erase” LGBTQs.

Fine is also a sponsor of Florida’s bill criminalizing drag shows in view of minors. Of note, his wife runs a self-described “sultry” burlesque show that would violate her husband’s law.

Racist Cultist Attacks Mail Carrier Over Harris Flyers
CO Parent Loses Suit To Display “Straight Pride” Flags

As you’ll see in the video report, Feldman demanded that the school display the black and white version of the “straight pride” flag seen below.

Trump Wanted To Withhold Disaster Relief After 2018 California Wildfires Because State Is Dem Stronghold

Hit the link for other already known examples of Trump withholding federal relief from blue states. Earlier this week Trump posted that Biden was withholding relief from “Republican areas” in North Carolina.

PA School Board Cuts Windows Into “Gender-Identity” Bathrooms Upon Advice Of Local Christian Law Firm
Trump Wanted To Withhold Disaster Relief After 2018 California Wildfires Because State Is Dem Stronghold
Bakery Gets Anti-Gay Death Threats Over Walz Cookies

Popp is posting screenshots of the threats on the bakery’s Facebook page.

CNN Fact-Checks The Felon’s Lies About FEMA Funds

Peace & Justice History for 10/7:

An especially sad item within.

October 7, 1989
Tens of thousands (estimates ranged from 40,000 to 150,000) from all over the country marched on Washington, lobbied Congress and Housing Secretary Jack Kemp to provide affordable housing for the homeless. Some of the signs read, “Build Houses, Not Bombs.”
Kemp signed a letter committing the George H.W. Bush administration to several steps to help the homeless, including setting aside about 5000 government-owned single-family houses for them.

===============

October 7, 1998

Matthew Shepard
Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden fence post outside Laramie, Wyoming; he died five days later. His death helped awaken the nation to the persecution of homosexuals and their victimization as objects of hate crimes.
A play about the incident, and later an HBO movie, “The Laramie Project,” has been performed all over the country.
Watch a preview 
MatthewShepard.org 
Matthew’s Place 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october7

Good Humans

When Kris Kristofferson (RIP) Stood by Sinéad O’Connor at the Height of Her Controversy

A Cog in the Wheel? Not a Chance. by Jess Piper

Good trouble if you can get it…

Read on Substack

I will be discussing the Koch brothers in this essay. If you are unfamiliar with them, here is a primer.

“Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

~John Lewis

I once left an educational conference with nearly a dozen cans of Diet Coke, several boxed lunches, a handful of cookies, and every handout I could get my hands on. I left with every pen, lanyard, and every lesson plan that was out for the taking.

I’m not a hoarder or even participating in minor theft — it was all free. I was attending a Koch-funded Bill of Rights Teacher Institute and I was going to take those folks for every penny I could. The next day, I delivered the cookies and boxed lunches to the teachers’ lounge. I drank the Diet Cokes.

Koch money paid for my day out of school for this seminar by giving me a stipend and paying for my sub while I was out of the classroom. I think it was around $400 in total.

Did I make a dent in a billionaire’s pocketbook? No. Would I participate as a cog in the wheel in their dystopian vision of education? Hell no.

“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

~Henry David Thoreau

I have read enough protest literature to know one thing: don’t be a cog in the wheel. If you see something you don’t like, shut it down. If you can’t shut it down, make the harmful agenda more difficult.

That’s exactly the sort of minor mayhem I have caused for years. Slight chaos. A burr under the saddle. A thorn in the side. A constant irritation.

The older I get, the more brazen I have become in not lending myself to the wrong which I condemn. I applied to the Koch-funded Bill of Rights Teacher Institute after hearing about it at other teacher seminar I had attended.

My last five years of teaching had grown a little tired and monotonous so I applied for summer travel institutes with the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities and others like the summer program at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. All were prestigious and admission was difficult.

I was lucky to be admitted to several.

I love to travel, but what I really loved about these institutes was learning about American History from scholars in the places where history happened. It makes a huge difference. I have learned from scholars across the country.

My lanyard from the George Washington Institute. I have 15 keepsake lanyards from teacher institutes I have attended. I am almost as proud of them as I am my degrees.

Once I found out that Koch money is used to sponsor teacher institutes, I knew I had to go. The Koch brothers —David has since died, while Charles remains— are from Kansas and several seminars happen right over the state line.

By attending these seminars, I was taking up the space of another educator. I was thinking of young teachers who might be indoctrinated by their bullshit. I was using up Koch time and resources and there was no way I would use their material or their instruction in my classroom.

Koch money is funding extremism across the country, especially in their vision of the future when it comes to education. They push for universal school vouchers which defund public schools, but it’s even more insidious than that. The Bill of Rights Institute offers curriculum workshops throughout the country, distributes teaching materials, holds essay contests for students, and displays its wares at the National Council for the Social Studies conference.

In its materials for teachers and students, the Bill of Rights cherry-picks the Constitution, history, and current events to hammer home its libertarian message that the owners of private property should be free to manage their wealth as they see fit. As one lesson insists: “The Founders considered industry and property rights critical to the happiness of society.” This message—that individual owners of property are the source of social good, their property sacred, and government the source of danger—is woven through the entire Koch curriculum.

The material and the professional development are sneaky. A teacher could attend a training and walk out thinking not much about it, but there is an underlying premise…the right to private property (wealth) is the only right that needs any defense. That is exactly the point of the Koch doctrine.

The Koch billionaires spent much of their lives and a good chunk of their fortune pushing anti-tax policies. They helped found the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, and helped fund the Heritage Foundation.

Yes, the folks behind Project 2025.

I found it so odd that the Bill of Rights Institute was even funding teacher seminars in the first place knowing that the brothers hate public education.

David Koch once stated, “We advocate the complete separation of education and state. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”

Good god. Talk about the quiet part out loud. Koch money is hosting seminars to disseminate propaganda directly to public school teachers in an effort to end public schools.

They also fund seminars for students.

I had heard they have a Bill of Rights summer institute for students in high school. A fully-paid trip to Washington, DC. I encouraged my 16-year-old son to apply and he was accepted. He learned to interact with very right-wing topics and children who are being indoctrinated to speak and debate on those topics.

My son came out stronger in his liberal values — he also used up about $2500 in Koch money and took the seat of a student who may have been susceptible to indoctrination.

I do these things to give these oligarchs no rest. No peace. It is my small way of throwing a wrench into the gears.

I work just as hard to be a constant sort of irritation to the Herzog Foundation. A billion dollar Missouri-based company whose mission is to “catalyze Christian education.” In smaller words, they want to send taxpayer money to private religious schools and even push for vouchers for homeschoolers. The less they know, right?

The Herzog Foundation is also on the Board of Advisory for Project 2025.

I once stood in a cornfield with a dozen friends to protest the “school choice” grifter they brought to town. I often tweet out their events and hundreds of folks have signed up to fill the seats. The foundation had to shut down an event and re-register people after I tweeted out the registration link for a Sarah Huckabee Sanders visit. She came to Missouri to sell her school voucher snake oil.

How can I help it if hundreds of folks who have no interest in an event, and have a burner email account, register for Herzog events and break the registration links?

I constantly comment on their social media posts. I write about them. I tell others about their mission. In general, I make a nuisance of myself.

No rest. No peace.

You can do these things too. You can be a burr. A constant irritation. An annoyance.

What can we do about the oligarchs who are taking over our institutions and forcing propaganda into our schools?

We can be counter-friction to stop the machine. We can create good trouble.

~Jess

Gee-I wonder why?

Springfield meeting change: Only Clark County residents can speak at city meeting

By Jeremy P. Kelley

Springfield city government announced Wednesday that only residents of Clark County will be permitted to speak during the public comment portion of City Commission meetings in the future.

“The city of Springfield is committed to prioritizing the voices of our local residents at all commission meetings,” a city statement released Wednesday said. “To enhance community engagement and ensure that our decisions reflect the needs and interests of Springfield residents, we are implementing a new policy effective immediately.”

For months, Springfield City Commission meetings have been packed with attendees, many of them addressing grievances toward the commission over Haitian immigration issues. Some recent meetings have met the capacity limit for the City Hall Forum, forcing some later arrivals to sit outside on City Hall plaza.

To participate in the public comment portion of future commission meetings, speakers will have to complete a comment card and present valid proof of residency. Accepted forms of identification will include a State of Ohio driver’s license or a State of Ohio ID card.

“This requirement for proof of residency is designed to uphold the integrity of our meetings by ensuring that Clark County residents have a proper platform to address issues that matter to them,” city officials said. “This policy also aims to minimize disruptions from individuals who may misrepresent their residency to seek notoriety or cause distractions during meetings.

City officials said they do encourage all residents to speak up and share their perspectives on community matters at the meetings.

The next City Commission meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8, in the City Hall Forum at 76 E. High St. in downtown Springfield.

Here’s to a morning transcript

I am enjoying “Elizabeth and Essex” with Bette Davis because I’ve not seen it in full to just enjoy her talent. Tonight’s debate will be very like the first debate between the Don and Pres. Biden, with Sen. Vance playing the Don. I have no doubt Gov. Walz can handle it all, but there will be no fact checking or corrections, the two mods are women so I expect Vance to be abusive if one does try to control the program, and then there is this from the Daily Beast:

You Won’t Like Who JD Vance Will Copy at Tonight’s Debate

The past is always prologue and this one features another shouty Yale Law School graduate.

Nell Scovell Updated Oct. 01, 2024 12:52PM EDT / Published Oct. 01, 2024 12:46PM EDT 

Snippet:

Look for candidate JD Vance to come out swinging at Tuesday’s vice presidential debate against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Odds are good that Vance will go for the Trumpian emotional trifecta: playing the victim, spewing anger, and attacking women and immigrants.

While not everyone is charmed by righteous rage, Donald Trump is the “audience of one” who needs to hear his chosen candidate mimic the boss. There’s precedent for this behavior from fellow Yale Law School graduate, Brett Kavanaugh. (snip)

Vance knows that his debate performance must please an “audience of one.” Job one is to make Daddy Donald proud. Reasonable and empathetic just won’t cut it. Here are ten predictions for how Vance will follow in Kavanaugh’s footsteps by using a sharp tone, being overly emotional and saying a few things he should not say. (snip-MORE)

Peace & Justice History for 9/28:

September 28, 1836
Cherokee Chief John Ross wrote a letter to both houses of the U.S. Congress stating that the Treaty of New Echota was not negotiated by any legitimate representatives of his nation.
Its terms required the Cherokees to relinquish all lands east of the Mississippi River for a payment of $5 million. Ross was the democratically chosen leader of a nation with its own language, its own newspaper, a bi-cameral legislature and a republican form of government.

Cherokee Chief John Ross
The Cherokee Nation celebrated its own arts and sports, and produced a wide variety of agricultural and commercial goods. I had twelve political units ranging from northern Alabama to western North Carolina.Writing from north Georgia, Ross said: “The makers of it [the treaty] sustain no office nor appointment in our Nation, under the designation of Chiefs, Head men, or any other title, by which they hold, or could acquire, authority to assume the reins of Government, and to make bargain and sale of our rights, our possessions, and our common country . . . .
“ We are despoiled of our private possessions, the indefeasible property of individuals. We are stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal self-defence. Our property may be plundered before our eyes; violence may be committed on our persons; even our lives may be taken away, and there is none to regard our complaints. We are denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the human family!”
Full text of the letter 
September 28, 1917
166 people who were (or had been) active in the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World, whose members were also known as Wobblies) were indicted for protesting World War I.They were accused of trying to “cause insubordination, disloyalty, and refusal of duty in the military and naval forces” in violation of the Espionage Act. One hundred and one defendants were found guilty, and received prison sentences ranging from days to twenty years, with accompanying fines of $10,000-$20,000. This was part of a successful U.S. government campaign to cripple the radical union movement.

The I.W.W. – A Brief History (U.S.) 
I.W.W. home 
September 28, 1943
In Denmark, underground anti-Nazi activists began systematic smuggling of Jews to Sweden. In just three weeks, all but 481 of Denmark’s 8000 Jews had been moved to safety.
Kim Malthe-Bruun, a 21-year-old Danish resistance fighter. Unfortunately one of the ones who did not make it.


A Danish Jewish family ready to go
Read more about Kim 
September 28, 2005
The lawyer who wrote the original legal complaint in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, Constance Baker Motley, died in New York City. She had led a remarkable career which began at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) where she was their first female attorney. The first black woman to argue before the Supreme Court, she was successful in nine of her ten cases. Motley went on to achieve three more firsts as an African American woman: being elected to the New York State Senate and shortly thereafter to the Manhattan Borough presidency. Finally, Pres. Lyndon Johnson appointed her to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1966 where she served until her passing.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september28

Neo-Nazi Telegram Users Panic Amid Crackdown and Arrest of Alleged Leaders of Online Extremist Group

An analysis by ProPublica and FRONTLINE shows a surge in activity on Telegram channels aligned with the Terrorgram Collective, as allies tried to rally support for their comrades in custody and sought to oust users they believed to be federal agents.

It’s a worthy read. Also, if you prefer to listen, click through to listen.

https://www.propublica.org/article/telegram-terrorgram-collective-extremism-accelerationists-dallas-humber-matthew-allison

Snippets:

The recent crackdown on the social media platform Telegram has triggered waves of panic among the neo-Nazis who have made the app their headquarters for posting hate and planning violence.

“Shut It Down,” one person posted in a white supremacist chat on Tuesday, hours after Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced he would begin sharing some users’ identifying information with law enforcement.

With over 900 million users around the globe, Telegram has been both revered and reviled for its hands-off approach to moderating posted content. The platform made headlines this summer when French authorities arrested Durov, seeking to hold him responsible for illegal activity that has been conducted or facilitated on the platform — including organized drug trafficking, child pornography and fraud.

Durov has called the charges “misguided.” But he acknowledged that criminals have abused the platform and promised in a Telegram post to “significantly improve things in this regard.” Durov’s announcement marked a considerable policy shift: He said Telegram will now share the IP addresses and phone numbers of users who violate the platform’s rules with authorities “in response to valid legal requests.”

This was the second time in weeks that extremists had called on their brethren to abandon Telegram. The first flurry of panic followed indictments by the Justice Department of two alleged leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, a group of white supremacists accused of inciting others on the platform to commit racist killings. (snip)

An analysis by ProPublica and FRONTLINE, however, shows that despite the wave of early panic, users didn’t initially leave the platform. Instead there was a surge in activity on Terrorgram-aligned channels and chats, as allies of the group tried to rally support for their comrades in custody, railed against the government’s actions and sought to oust users they believed to be federal agents.

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. have charged Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, two alleged leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, with a slew of felonies including soliciting the murder of government officials on Telegram.

Humber has pleaded (sic) not guilty. She made a brief appearance in federal court in Sacramento, California, on Sept. 13, during which she was denied bail. Humber, shackled and clad in orange-and-white jail garb, said nothing. Allison, who has not yet entered a plea, was arrested in Idaho but will face trial in California.

Attorneys for Humber and Allison did not respond to separate requests for comment.

The two are alleged Accelerationists, a subset of white supremacists intent on accelerating the collapse of today’s liberal democracies and replacing them with all-white ethno-states, according to the indictment.

Through a constellation of linked Telegram channels, the collective distributes books, audio recordings, videos, posters and calendars celebrating white supremacist mass murderers, such as Brenton Tarrant, who in early 2019 stormed two mosques in New Zealand and shot to death 51 Muslim worshippers.

The group explicitly aims to inspire similar attacks, offering would-be terrorists tips and tools for carrying out spectacular acts of violence and sabotage. A now-defunct channel allegedly run by Humber, for example, featured instructions on how to make a vast array of potent explosives. After their arrests, channels allegedly run by Humber and Allison went silent.

But within days of the indictments, an anonymous Telegram user had set up a new channel “dedicated to updates about their situation.” (snip)

Matthew Kriner, managing director of the Accelerationism Research Consortium, said the Terrorgram Collective had already been badly weakened by a string of arrests in the U.S., Europe and Canada over the past two years. “Overall, the arrests of Humber and Allison are likely the final blow to the Terrorgram Collective,” Kriner said.

In the U.S., federal agents this year have arrested at least two individuals who were allegedly inspired by the group. The first was Alexander Lightner, a 26-year-old construction worker who was apprehended in January during a raid on his Florida home. In a series of Telegram posts, Lightner said he planned to commit a racially or ethnically motivated mass killing, according to prosecutors. Court records show that agents found a manual produced by the Terrorgram Collective and a copy of “Mein Kampf” in Lightner’s home.

Lightner has pleaded (sic) not guilty to charges of making online threats and possessing an illegal handgun silencer. His attorney declined to comment. (snip)

In extremist circles, there was more discussion about fleeing Telegram after Durov’s announcement this week. “Time is running out on this sinking ship,” wrote one user. “So we’re ditching Telegram?” asked another.

“Every time we have a success against one of them, they learn, they adapt, they modify,” said Don Robinson, who as an FBI agent conducted infiltration operations against white supremacists. “Extremists can simply pick up and move to a new platform once they are de-platformed for content abuses. This leaves law enforcement and intelligence agencies playing an endless game of Whac-a-Mole to identify where the next threat may be coming from.”